1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates to the servicing of client requests and, more particularly, to distinguishing and identifying user-client applications associated with requests.
2. Description of the Related Art
Users of networks, and requestors of web data in particular, have a significant number of client programs available for their use, such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and other custom-built or proprietary client programs. Because not all such client programs process received data in the same way, identical content served to, e.g., Opera may appear or behave quite differently than that served and displayed to Internet Explorer.
Some client programs may identify their program make, version, and/or capabilities (i.e., they identify themselves, not which particular user they represent) as part of a request. Many such clients, however, provide users with the ability to “spoof”, or make up, the client identifier. If such an identifier is successfully spoofed, a web server may end up serving content designed for one particular client program to a second, different client program. In particular, malicious programs or user client applications may fail to or falsely identify themselves. Malicious applications that are not identified as such may attempt to attack or undermine network resources through, for example, denial-of-service attacks, workflow evasion, automated ‘bot’ registration, and other means.